


where you lay your head

by guardyanangel



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Homesickness, Post-Canon, Post-The Last Battle, The Problem of Susan, needs its own tag, vaguely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 17:18:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2700992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardyanangel/pseuds/guardyanangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Narnia's memory haunts Susan Pevensie long after it is lost to her, and its shadow doesn't touch her alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where you lay your head

**Author's Note:**

> I always felt like Susan didn't entirely forget; only that it hurt too much to. I also felt like pushing that kind of hurt away as she does between Prince Caspian and The Last Battle wasn't something that would last. Finally, it always seemed to me Susan would see America as a land of second chances. So.
> 
> Title from Gabrielle Alpin's song "Home."

He finds her in the kitchen with a cup of tea in hand-- cold, judging by the lack of steam rising from the mug. He can't help the sigh, though he muffles it with a press of his lips to her hair.

"You should be in bed, Su."

"I can't sleep," she murmurs, voice so very far away, "I'm homesick."

Another sigh, then, and his hand finds her shoulder to squeeze gently.

"I think by year's end we'll have enough for a short trip to England," he tells her quietly, "Would that help?"

She looks up at him, and the smile isn't one that used to break a thousand men's hearts-- it's just one that breaks his. He never understood how she could smile so incredibly sadly, like there were more decades of grief than she'd lived behind the gesture. He supposed losing your family all at once like she had would do that to a person. 

"I love you," she tells him, a hand lifting to touch his cheek fondly.

He presses a soft kiss her palm.

"Would it help?" he asks again, undeterred by her gentle misdirection.

"...No, love," she answers with that sad, incomprehensible smile, "It's not home."

And although he knows feeling homesick means that home is distinctly not where one is, he still half-expects her to say "here is;" like those girls out of the romantic movies they used to watch when they first started seeing one another. He doesn't know whether he'd believe her if she did, for all the wedding bands on their fingers ought to make him think so.

Luckily, perhaps, she doesn't say it, and he doesn't ask her why. Instead, she sips at her tea while he rests a hand on her shoulder and listens to the silence ring with words unspoken. Somehow, he doesn't feel like the descriptions of home he's thinking of are the ones she is. Still, he just can't imagine, if it wasn't England or here, where else in the world her "home" could be.

(He doesn't know-- never does, in all their years together-- that nowhere in _this_ world ever  _could_ be.

That was exactly the problem.)


End file.
